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Temple of Moradin

So, I got to play around a bit more using GIMP and produced this little temple:

The temple is dedicated to Moradin, the hammered-wielding Dwarven god of blacksmithing. This gave me the idea of using a giant war-hammeras an altar.
The braziers on both sides represent the forge... (most of the furniture was pilfered from the Dundjinni's forum, I hope nobody minds).

There is also a roofed version. The tiles were made using MSZ's wonderful tutorial.

I do have a couple of questions and/or suggestions. First, why are the grass and dirt path areas of the map shaped like they are? It seems fairly odd unless there is a wall or fence enclosing it, which I believe is what the shading is trying to suggest. If this is the case then perhaps a stronger graphical indicator of the presence of the barrier would add nicely to the map. If you need some tile sets or just a bit of inspiration on the approach to this, trying looking at Torstan's very lovely maptools tile pack, http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...-small-project, it has some great wall sections in it that you could recolor if need be, though their hand-drawn style might not jive particularly well with your crisper image.

Second, the outlining of the building is done in a very light color, seems to be a brownish green (to my eyes at least, I have trouble with colors). A stronger darker color, even pure black (though you would want to significantly reduce the weight of the line then) could make the building stand out more and better define the edge against the grass.

There is indeed a wall surrounding the building, with three gates in it, each leading to one of the paths.

The walls are in the same dark brown colour as the building's walls, though. So, considering these are not "poppy enough", there might not be easy to see. Especially considering they are even thinner...

In fact, they are not whiter, but it seems to me they are easier to see that way...

I also had the idea to put a little blurry zone on both sides of the paths. The idea was to make a smoother transition. But I am not happy as to how they turned out. It was tacked on after the paths were made, though, and the bump map and the grids to not follow them, giving them a weird aspect...

I think I will use try it later, though, but this time do it at the moment I am constructing the paths...

Nice. Just a thought, but as I recall Moradin is the head of the dwarven pantheon, which would probably put a temple of Moradin underground. Might want to give it to a different deity. Unless your dwarves moved above ground for some reason.

My idea is that they were dwarves but living in a human city, and there even have some human followers (blacksmith and metal workers mainly) of Moradin attending.
But I also had the idea that a bigger subterranean complex also existed, for the clergy and the administration of the temple...

2 bits of advice on the roof, totally subject to individual preferences.

The roof matches the color of the path to closely, I think it would look better if there were some contrast.

Aside from the lines showing the shape of the roof, it looks flat. Add shadows and gradients to give it depth. Here is a roof by Digger at Dundjinni that has great depth from shading.

Next try...

The tiles are now blue to contrast with the paths better. Plus, it had the advantage of suggesting a slate roof. Slates are good reliable stones rather than puny baked clay... In retrospect, it seems more dwarwish to me. But maybe they are a bit too blue now.

I also try to adjust the shadows. I don't know if they are very good now (for some reason I have trouble visualisig where real shadows would fall), but I thin that they are quite a bit better than they were before.